Culinary Classes

Hey y’all! I just graduated from a four week Fundamentals of Basic Culinary course. As you might already know, I LOVE to cook. Ever since I can remember, working with food has always excited me.

My desire was to take a culinary course upon our return to the US. I didn’t even think of pursuing that interest over here, until Mom came across an add in the local paper advertising AICA (The Academy for International Culinary Arts). I was immediately interested and gave them a call… The past four weeks have been a blast. My class was quite small with only 7 students. Each session was filled with helpful hands-on instruction. I was by far the youngest in the class, and, of course, the only one that didn’t speak Tagalog.

A funny story for you… on the first night of class, after introducing ourselves, and setting up our stations, we were all having a little trouble opening our packaged knives, provided by AICA. All of the sudden I lost my grip and the VERY SHARP chef knife cut through the plastic and sliced my finger. Thinking it was only a “little” cut I quickly applied pressure so it wouldn’t bleed.

I didn’t want anyone to discover that I had cut myself in the first minute, of the first session, of our culinary class. How embarrassing! I couldn’t hide my cut much longer; blood started dripping on the counter. As you might have already guessed… I was quite embarrassed.

Chef reminded me, “Those knives are really sharp!” Like I hadn’t already found out.:-) A comforting thought was discovering that I wasn’t the only one who cut myself on our first class. The same scenario happened to one of my classmates, that same evening. Thankfully, I haven’t cut myself since.:-)

I am so thankful for having that great opportunity. Not only do I have a host of new recipes, but I also know the tips and suggestions for each recipe. One of my favorite parts about this class was learning how to cook different cuisines such as Asian, Filipino, European, and American.

For the Final Exam, the entire class worked together in preparing and serving a 6-course meal for our families and friends. Chef grouped the class where each person had the chance to prepare and plate a course for that evening. According to my family, the food tasted great.

All the fantastic things I’ve learned through AICA, I hope to use and apply to my future cooking. Sometime within the next few years I would like to take more advanced training in the area of culinary arts.

“After all, anyone can cook!” - Quote from Ratatouille